Disappointed Dreams
by audiodroplets
Summary: Love lost, love gained.
1. Crash

He dreamed of her, with her red hair, falling in love with him. He loved her truly, fully, completely, but he knew she didn't love him like that. He was cruel at worst and misunderstood at best. He didn't know how to show affection or love, he had never been shown either as a young boy. His heart broke every day and he became bitter and spiteful. Completely embroiled in passion, and great and completely, completely consumed with madness and anger and spite and love. Until one day he broke his own heart, truly, fully, completely; by saying too much and not saying enough.

The balance wasn't attained, he pondered, as he reached for another bottle of whiskey. Twenty years to the day and he had grown into an old man, old in mind and heart, but not by society's standards. He was supposedly at his prime, but he was sinking slowly into his personal abyss - deeper and deeper until he no longer saw anything, deeper still, and he no longer felt anything, except the crushing darkness that enveloped his whole body.

He had broken another heart, simply because he was incapable of love, incapable of feeling anything except the darkness. Her soul was beautiful, as was her mind. He even loved her uncontrollable brown curls. She had tried to crack through his outer shell, and she had. He had lashed out and thrown her out ungracefully. She had left little pieces of herself that had slowly tormented him around his home.

Her leather journal lay open on the table to the last page he could bear to read. Her departure seemed so surreal, but now he realized that she'd gone and he'd never have back her laughter and smiles and tears. He would never get the jokes and empathy back. _I'm never going to get you back. I hate this. Come home to me. It's all my fault. It's all my damn fault._

Drinking another full-to-the-brim glass of whiskey, he swirled the remnants. His vision distorted -_almost there_- his head swam, his heart beat a slow rhythm, like that of an African drum in times of pain and mourning. He reached for the half-empty bottle to refill his glass, but his hand knocked the bottle off the table as he slowly fell out of the chair onto the floor, losing consciousness.

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_Her hair fell over her eyes as she looked up at him with those big, soulful, brown eyes. A single tear streamed down her face. He tried to move toward her, but was stopped by some invisible force. _

His eyes snap open, his breathing stops, and he stands up out of bed._ Is __she really here? Is she standing in my room? _His black eyes scan the darkness for any sign of her light. They are only met with the silent goodbye of his dream.

He collapses to his knees, sobs wracking his body. His dark hair falls forward as he buries his face in his hands.

He clamors back into bed and shuts his eyes, hoping for images of her face again. _Could you just please stay, my love? Will you wake up by my side?_

_She can't. She's gone._

Twenty-four painful hours pass and he feels desperate. He buys flowers and puts them on his bedside table so that the next time he sees her in his dream, he can give them to her.

_Because she deserves them._

The flowers pale in comparison to her beauty in his eyes.

If he got the chance to see her again that night - he no longer wanted to wake up. He drank himself into another bout of oblivion, not realizing that tonight might be his last, but being at peace with the idea.

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_i Chapter Two includes all credits. But, as always, all things Harry Potter belong to JKR. Reviews are always appreciated. /i _


	2. Rekindle

White. All he could see, think, and hear was white. _Am I dead? I don't deserve heaven, if I am._ He looked over to see an old friend sitting by him, a man with a long white beard that had saved his soul more than once - a father figure that loved him, or did before this horrible attempt at suicide, by drowning himself in alcohol.

"So sorry... so selfish," he managed to rasp out - his throat was painful and sore, his mouth tasted of bile and charcoal.

The father figure placed a hand on the dark haired man's arm, stopping his babbling and painful thoughts.

"Child, I love you regardless and there is nothing you could do that would ever change that. I'm not angry. It happens, but you just can't do it again," the old man's face cracked into a smile, and he pressed his hand a little harder in reassurance on the pale arm he was holding.

The patient smiled softly - the first real smile that had graced his face in over three months. Three months of alcohol abuse and complete heartache. Three months of feeling guilty. Three months of ignoring himself and those around him. Three months of sinking deep into himself.

The white started to seep into his skin, slowly, so slowly. The smile freed him from his disappointed dreams and finally let some light into the black.

Tears streamed quickly down the side of his face, all of the feeling he had missed in the past twenty years finally coming back to him. He imagined his tears to be black, streaming down his face. The darkness leaving his body in the only way it knew out. His heart began beating in his chest harder than it had before. His thirty something body was no longer feeling ninety.

He remembered her face, the brown haired beauty that had kindly taken him into her heart. She had loved him so truly, how could he have been so cruel? He had no right to harm her like that.

The white finished infusing him, and he no longer felt the pain that had overwhelmed him. He could see, think, taste, and hear the white all around him, but this time, it wasn't suffocating, it was freeing.

He could hear her voice in his head, "I love you," repeating softly in her dulcet tones that were ripe with tears. He tried to shake it out of his ears; there was nothing left that could make up for his mistakes. The sound wouldn't leave him. He opened his eyes and he could see her head shaking on the bed. He touched her with the slightest brush of his fingertips on her arm. So soft, and he smiled when she lifted her head to reveal tear stained cheeks.

"I love you, it's as simple as that. I had to push you away, I was afraid of hurting you..." his voice cracked, "I love you, I love you, I love you."

She wiped the back of her hand across her brown eyes and gave him a smile that cracked the remaining layers on his heart.

He was in love. He no longer held onto his disappointed dreams. How could he with this dream of a woman in front of him?

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_Reviews are __**always**__ appreciated. Inspiration for this fic from the songs "Dreaming with A Broken Heart" by John Mayer and "Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and Be Loved)" by Bright Eyes._

_As always - Characters belong to JKR, not I. _


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